Our Team
Dr. Nikolai Maximenko
Nikolai is a Senior Researcher at the International Pacific Research Center (IPRC) in the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology at the University of Hawaii. Over the past decade Nikolai has been at the forefront of oceanographic research and modeling of plastic marine debris trajectories and dynamics in the Pacific Ocean.
DR. Jan Hafner
Jan is a Climate Modeling Specialist at the IPRC at the University of Hawaii. In recent years, Jan has been working with Nikolai Maximenko on the problem of marine debris. Jan has established a predictive model of marine debris concentrations in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, which is updated daily and made available to FloatEco partners.
Dr. Gregory Ruiz
Greg is a Senior Scientist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC). He leads the Marine Invasions Research Laboratory - a research program of 40 ecologists, based at core SERC laboratories on Chesapeake Bay and San Francisco Bay - assessing the structure and function of coastal marine ecosystems. His research seeks to understand ecological change in space and time, including a strong focus on invasions by non-native species.
dr. Luca CEnturioni
Luca is a Researcher at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, where he studies large-scale circulation and vortex patterns across oceans using Lagrangian drifters. He is the Principal Investigator of the Global Drifter Program and leads the Lagrangian Drifter Laboratory, which is a major developer of drifter technology for NOAA’s Global Drifter Program and other agencies and institutions, including FloatEco. His team is also actively developing new oceanographic instruments that blend oceanography and biology.
Mary Crowley
Mary is the founder and director of Ocean Voyages Institute (OVI). With over 10 years of service, her non-profit is a leader in marine plastic pollution solutions and education. OVI's most recent efforts included a cleanup in the North Pacific, which removed over 40 tons of ghostnets and consumer plastics in June 2019, followed by a cleanup of reefs in Kane'ohe Bay, Hawaii - a target that she aims to exceed during her 2020 cruise.
Dr. James Carlton
Jim is Professor of Marine Sciences Emeritus at Williams College, Director Emeritus of the College’s Maritime Studies Program at Mystic Seaport, and a Research Associate of the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. Jim’s interests are in the environmental history of coastal waters, through the study of the ecology, biogeography, history and management of marine bioinvasions, of modern-day extinctions of marine organisms, and of overall changes in biodiversity over time and space. His current research sites are in New England, Coos Bay (Oregon), the Galapagos Islands, and Chile.
DR. Linsey Haram
Linsey is a post-doctoral research fellow in the Marine Invasions Research Lab at SERC. She is a community ecologist, specializing on the ecological impacts of non-native species in marine ecosystems and food webs. Linsey coordinates and conducts ecological research for the FloatEco team in the North Pacific Ocean and manages the Floating Ocean Ecosystem Tracker citizen science project. Linsey also leads the Women in Science group at SERC.
dr. Andrey ShCherBINA
Andrey is a Principal Oceanographer at the Applied Physics Laboratory at University of Washington. His research broadly focuses on upper ocean mixing, frontal dynamics, and modeling of these processes in coastal and shelf environments. Andrey also develops instrumentation to measure conditions in the upper ocean, including a mixed layer float for FloatEco’s oceanographic and biological research to be deployed in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre in 2020.
Dr. Cathryn Murray
Cathryn is a Research Scientist with the Ecosystem Stressors Program in Fisheries and Oceans Canada. She formerly served as Visiting Scientist with the North Pacific Marine Science Organization (PICES) on project ADRIFT (Assessing Debris-Related Impact From Tsunami). She has conducted interdisciplinary research on a broad range of topics, from the ecology of non-native species to ecosystem-based management.
CINDY WRIGHT
Cindy Wright is a Senior Oceanographic Technician at the Institute of Ocean Sciences (IOS) with Fisheries and Oceans Canada. She studies carbon in its many forms, following its lifecycle from its inputs to oceans to burial in sediments. She also works with the Oceanographic Mooring group at IOS and co-founded a long-term biological monitoring study within the IOS West Coast Mooring program to monitor aquatic non-native species and to study the interaction of biofouling organisms with man-made structures as a proxy for marine debris.